Google Pigeon update 24th June changed local SEO forever

With The Update Google Released on June 24 2014,The Local Search algorithm will now tie deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more.In addition, Google said that this new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters.

The Name on the Update is “Pigeon”Update

The new algorithm is currently has been rolled out for US English results,with plans to roll out in ther countries later and aims to provide a more useful and relevant experience for searchers seeking local results.This “Pigeon” Update will tie Local Search algorithm deeper to web signals.In addition, this new algorithm improves  distance and location ranking parameters for the Local Search algorithm.

How Google’s Pigeon Update Solves Yelp Problem, Boosts Local Directories?

If You Rember Yelp’s recent accusations that Google was manipulating its search results to show Google’s own local listings and content ahead of Yelp pages even when users specifically included “Yelp” in their searches. Yelp’s report specifically looked at the search term “gary danko yelp” (Gary Danko is a San Francisco restaurant) and showed how Google listed the restaurant’s official website first, along with several links to Google+ content such as reviews and its Google+ page.Now With this New Update,that “problem” is fixed.

The Yelp page for the restaurant now shows up first when the query includes “Yelp.” Two other Yelp URLs also show up ahead of the official website.The same thing is visible on searches for other restaurants, although sometimes it’s one Yelp URL showing up ahead of the official site.Because the update tied local rankings more closely to traditional web-ranking signals like domain authority and backlinks, and because large directory sites already had strong SEO profiles, they naturally rose in relevance for their own branded and topical searches

Experts Weigh In On Google’s “Pigeon” Update Aimed At Improving Local Search Results

David Mihm, Director of Local Search Strategy at Moz

Overall, this update seems like an amplification of the previous silent Hummingbird update from last fall.  Just like last time, I would argue that the quality of the SERPs has been downgraded, with “search results within search results” (i.e. directories) getting rewarded relative to their pre-Pigeon position.

Directories with strong brands (like Yelp, as Matt McGee already pointed out) often show up multiple times for the same search, especially on recovery searches for specific small businesses – many of which occur when the searcher clicks a Carousel result.  But they’re even prevalent on far less-specific discovery searches, and on searches performed on mobile devices (in my own limited testing).

I fail to see how this is an improved, let alone a good, experience for searchers.

Greg Gifford, Director of Search and Social at Autorevo

In the automotive niche, we seem to be isolated a bit from the crazy effects we’re hearing about elsewhere. In some cities, we haven’t even seen a significant shift in map pack rankings (any more than what we’d see on a monthly basis anyway).

We’re still seeing map packs on auto dealer related search queries, and the vast majority of results are mostly the same.

We have Identified  a few random anomalies. In the past, “used cars CITY” always brought up a map pack. We’ve seen a few isolated cities where the map pack has disappeared for that query.

Why Search Engine Land’s Name The New Google Local Search Update as “Pigeon”

Last night, Google released a pretty significant local search algorithm update. Google told us there was no internal name for the update, but now that we see that it was fairly significant, we decided to give it a name: Pigeon.

Pigeon is the name we decided on because this is a local search update and pigeons tend to fly back home.

When the Google Panda update launched, there was no official name from Google, so we named it the “Farmer” update. A few days later, Google told us they internally named it the Panda update. So we switched names from Farmer to Panda to avoid that confusion.

Since this update was nameless at Google, we named it the Pigeon update so that we have a name to reference in the future.

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